After piecing together a desktop from scavenged parts, much frustration, much swearing, a lesson in customer service to the Microsoft people, more swearing, driver issues, network issues, internet connection issues, more swearing, a threat or two and just a bit more swearing, I have rescued The Lilith Quotient from the depths of the hard drive grave.

I couldn’t have done it without help from our friends from Philly, Diana and Biancs, but I have it.

Now I’m copying a ton of other files, but the novel is safely recovered. I need a drink.

Something with WP is boogering up my post illustrations, and it’s pissing me off. I put a pic in my post, and WP is making up just whatever size it wants the pic to be (like 518.4 px wide) and makes it that size.

No matter how many times or how many ways I edit it, it reverts to some made up size. It’s pissing me off. Did I already say that?

Anyway, I’ve been rather inspired the last few days, and I’m making killer progress on The Lilith Quotient. I’ve got about a quarter of the book done. Not just that many pages, but that many really good pages, if that makes any sense. It barely even looks like the story posted here anymore.

Y’all are gonna buy this thing when I’m done, right?

Anyone care to read a semi-smutty sci-fi story beating up on the Uncommon Descent creeps and tell me what you think so far?

Oh, and one little announcement concerning another blog – blipey’s birthday was yesterday, and he may resurrect A Clown in the Middle. Go say happy birthday and apply pressure on him to post some more. The blogosphere is in desperate need of blipey.

From watching many years pass, I’ve learned that it’s only in retrospect that we really understand the significance of events in our lives. I often look back now and view my life as a series of books and chapters. The first chapter of the first book of my life encompasses all of the years before I met Kate. Then there’s the brief chapter before our wedding, and the chapter after our wedding, the latter being mostly about fighting a rear-guard action against what would eventually become our arch nemesis, the plague that is the Pax.

The second book begins the day I walked out of the rejuvenation clinic for the first time. It was very much a new beginning. I had never been more than 18 on the inside, but by the time of the denouement of the first book, even I had begun to notice that the body was not keeping pace with the spirit, and even the spirit was slowing down. When I walked out of the clinic, I was reborn in both body and spirit. The second book of my life is filled with chapters of wonder and amazement, eventually flitting through space with Kate and later Kristine as well, adventures in exploration, daring escapades of defiance of the Pax. We saw ourselves as the pirates and raiders of the blackness between the stars, the Robin Hoods of Vacuum.

Though I may have had an inkling at the time, it’s only looking back now that I fully understand that this evening at Matt’s secret hideaway was the beginning of the third book. This massage was the opening line of chapter one.

After an hour or so I was feeling completely relaxed and at ease in my comfortable oblivion. The hands of Kristine and Matt on my body were the harmonies of a lullaby, and added to the three reddish orange drinks I’d finished and whatever Matt was spiking them with, I was as calm as the Dalai Lama on holiday.

Matt was again astride my thighs, and was leaning forward to rub the backs of my arms, which were stretched out in front of me above my head and resting on padded appendages to the table. I was entranced with the rhythm of his slowly breathing chest against my back, the weight of his body pressing down on me like a form fitted quilt, warm and soothing.

Further back, a long lost friend was knocking at the door requesting admittance. Never one to be rude, I pushed my hips upwards and granted him entrance.

Being enveloped in Matt’s strong arms was incredibly comforting. It was just where I needed to be, just when I needed to be there. I would have thought it would have taken a pry bar to get me loose from there. I was wrong.

I tried to rip free to give this Liz a good talking to. Matt held me tightly captive with one hand pinned behind my back, and clamped his other over my mouth, but in such a way as it would have appeared to anyone else as a gesture of consolation.

“Do what you can, Liz. Let me know if there’s any hope for her. Otherwise sell her to the scrap yard for the best price you can.”

I was nearing a full on panic. We had poured a lot of love and a lot of hours into customizing and improving the systems on the Mirror. She was as much our friend and lover as she was our means of transportation, and I was not about to just let her go to the scrap heap because of a little ding in the bumper. Truthfully, the damage to the Mirror was bad, but not so extensive she couldn’t be fixed, and Matt’s sudden change had thoughts of capture and escape at the forefront of my mind. I saw Matt give the slightest turn of his head toward Kristine, who I couldn’t quite see. I suspected she was about to throttle him.

I tried to keep telling myself that it was impossible. Matt hated the Pax as much as we did. He’d never turn me over to them. But as much as I wanted to trust my gut, the fact was I was his captive and his hostage against any reprisal from an unarmed Kristine.

Kristine’s offer was touching, but foolish. She knew that, but that wouldn’t have stopped her in this case. Unfortunately, it was also impossible.

True enough, the Vox would have jettisoned Kate’s body into space before leaving, but there was no body to jettison. There was a special punishment reserved for the most egregious of blasphemers, and Kate and I were at the top of that list. Though Tardicus didn’t know about Kristine, I felt pretty sure that whoever was responsible for my rescue had just joined me there in Kate’s place.

One of the saddest recurring themes of human history is that someone always finds a way to twist scientific discovery into some form of killing machine. In this case, the same technology that was used to transport matter from one place to another had been corrupted to turn people into batteries.

When Tardicus fired his weapon at Kate, her every molecule was instantly transformed into a beam of light. The ship’s computer would have automatically absorbed this enormous amount of energy and channeled it directly into the Vox‘s power cells.

“She’s doing ‘penance’.”

Kristine was silent for a moment before she could find the words that needed to be asked eventually. “Where to?”

Tardicus wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of seeing my tears. It took everything I had in me to not let that happen. With my jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, I nearly succeeded.

One single tear managed to escape, and began to roll down my cheek. One single silent word of eulogy to the first and greatest Love of my very long life.

I imagine Tardicus fancied himself the Angel of Death, visiting his touch on deserving heathens. I fancied him a hypocritical psychopath with a god complex, much more like his not-really-a-secret lover Javison than he’d care to admit.

Rejuv techniques had come a long way since they were first invented. I was in my late fifties when Dr. Lene Hau’s discoveries were finally turned toward medical applications, and nearly seventy when I first entered a rejuvenation clinic. Waking up to an eighteen year old body was quite a shock, but the center had very skilled counselors on hand to help with the transition. Most of them had been through the experience of old age themselves, which added to their ability to help guide people through the surprise.

These days, a rejuv would not only reset your biological clock, but was quite capable of fixing all manner of chemical imbalances in the brain. It was no accident that Tardicus and Javison were left exactly as criminally insane as they were. Albert needed them this way.

I was about to echo my Lover’s last words when the Vox bucked violently under my knees.

The Pax Praepositus had taken over everything. It permeated every facet of life. In most places, a person could hardly take a piss without the Pax’s permission and oversight. It imposed its will on every species it came across, either by subjugation or extermination. Converto vel Intereo was scrawled on the hull of every ship in the Pax’s fleet. Convert or Die. Any sentient species that looked a little too human or not quite human enough didn’t even get the first choice.

It altered history in whatever way it saw fit, corrupted science to suit its own warped view of reality. The Pax had installed its twisted religion as the basis for universal central government and it was headed by the biggest con-artist in human history. Pope Albert I was “Man’s Mediator Before God, Amen”. In every place on every planet the Pax touched, he was God, for all intents and purposes. And the pompous fuck had a thing for ancient Latin, and for keeping the masses illiterate. Very few of us remained that could still read and write in any language, let alone Latin. It was no accident.

Nobody was really sure how many people lived under the Pope’s banner, or even how many species, except maybe that insipid little bean counter of his, Caldovar. Caldovar was a bootlicking psychopath with a taste for torture, but the spine of a jellyfish. Anyone who crossed him or even looked at him funny found themselves in restraints, Caldovar’s helpless play thing. His other sick personal passion was to track the numbers. How many before and how many after the purges.

There was a nearly infinite number of reasons to hate the Pax on ideological grounds.

But most of all I hated the Pax Praepositus for personal reasons. The Pax had killed Kate.